To define as “post-secular” the spiritual condition of western societies today means stating that the historical process of secularisation, which has led to the progressive public irrelevance of religious sentiments, has reached its limits. This results in important consequences in reintroducing the classic debate on “faith and reason” and in readdressing relations between the ecclesiastic institutions and the State.
There is now a “return of religion” to the public sphere, coinciding with the intensification of moral issues linked to bioethical problems and biotechnologies and new issues concerning sexual behaviour and the definition of the family. However, even faced with the reappearance of new collective needs regarding identity (the West’s identity or that of Europe addressing the emergence of Islam), religions, or rather the Churches and their agencies, feel appointed or pressed to provide indicators for cultural identities or rules for public ethics – without however in principle challenging the lay, secular or secularised nature of political institutions.
However it is here that the problems arise. One of the products of secularisation in fact, is the plurality of identities and moral lifestyles and of the ethos, while religions, in particular Catholicism, univocally if not exclusively, claim the monopoly of “real” and/or “natural” morals, hence a shared ethos, to eventually even be promoted with provision that are binding for everyone. It is at this point that it is legitimate to ask oneself whether post-secularism risks questioning some of the foundations of democracy itself. Decades ago, a classical scholar of democracy, Hans Kelsen, was convinced that democratic life was incompatible with all religious truths or absolute moral beliefs. He deducted the need for democracy to be “relativist” (an expression that in the meantime is used as an act of moral accusation). Between the religious and the non-religious man – he said – there exists an insuperable basic conflict, based for one on “truths” that are transcendent, univocal and absolute, and for the other on “certainties” that are immanent, plural and relative, in the sense that they are referred to contingent circumstances also changeable over time – especially when judgements and moral behaviour is at stake.
Has post-secular society changed any of this? First of all one must consider that in accepting the State’s secularisation, the believer has fully joined democratic political dynamics, he has learned to address the truths/certainties of others, accepting the rules of political compromise (albeit motivating this differently than the secular person), adopting the logics of the majority/minority. All in all, as a citizen-believer he places himself within the framework of searching for the maximum “relative” consensus. But while he renounces the imposition of his “truths”, he remains convinced that only the moral values he defends are positive, or rather indispensable, for “keeping society together”. He considers himself the custodian of the common ethos, keeping it safe from the individualistic perspective of the non-believer or secular person (incidentally, we know that these two concepts are not synonyms, but it is part of the clerical strategy to pretend that they are). In short, the believer of the post-secular era believes he only can provide those normative moral premises that allow the very functioning of secularised democracy.
The Böckenfördian Diktum
This attitude regards to democracy can refer to the successful and popular thesis expressed by the German catholic constitutionalist Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde: “The secularised liberal State is based on normative premises it cannot guarantee”. Coined in a now distant 1967, within a cultural, political and scientific context incomparable to today’s, this formula has a meaningfulness (especially when specifying that “this is the great risk that (the secular State) has run in the name of Freedom”) that goes well beyond the instrumental use often attributed to it.
The böckenfördian thesis in fact can be considered from two points of view: as a denouncing of the liberal secular State’s insuperable aporia, or as a suggestion to solve this aporia reactivating Christian values. The post-secular ambience seems to solicit and promote this second interpretation, according to which religion (the Christian religion) lays claim to the right to guarantee the liberal State’s “normative premises” without denying the principle of secularism.
In fact, Böckenförde’s theory has contributed to ensure that men of the Church (firstly those of German culture, starting with Joseph Ratzinger) would abandon all reservations regards to liberal democracy, on condition that this democracy would acknowledge its structural deficit of values. The Church therefore presents its offer of ethos that, mediated by its traditional doctrine, is presented as irreplaceable for the good functioning of democratic society, in particular for its integration.
One must immediately state that Böckenförde’s thoughts on the need for pre-political consensual values, providing the political pact with its integrative effectiveness, although considering the historical roots of Christianity, does not contain any civil-political indication. Böckenförde mistrusts all use of Christianity as a “civil religion”. Nor does he recommend any form of restoration of the Christian State. The secularisation process is irreversible. The institutional relationship between Church and State remains a “balanced separation”, a “dialectic” relationship orientated at a partnership within a rigorous separation of competences, envisaging reciprocal attention between al citizens whatever their beliefs may be, open to compromise ad loyalty with regards to decision taken by the majority.
In short, according to Böckenförde, on one hand there is the Church perceiving its role as a religious announcement that comes before any possible legitimising contribution concerning existing political order, however powerful its influence may effectively be. One the other hand there is the secularised and rational State, strictly adhering to the principle of its citizens’ freedom as the requisite for maintaining peace and order. It must simply be aware that it is not capable of creating full integration, because its “basic normative premises” are not linked to it. In fact they above all draw on pre-political and religious values.
As one can see, what the böckenfördian Diktum summarises is an open aporia, in continuous tension, deeply-rooted in the very constitutional foundations of democracy and that must therefore entrust itself to the reasonableness/rationality of politics aware of their own normative deficit.
Habermas’ critique
Among the most firm critics of this thesis there is Jürgen Habermas, worried that that Böckenförde’s emphasis on pre-political values might question the self-legitimising capability of democratically implemented juridical procedures. The philosopher from Frankfurt represents his “proceduralist idea” inspired by Kant, that bases the constitutional principles on the procedures themselves rendering these rationally acceptable to all citizens, whatever their beliefs and presuppositions of values.
Habermas admits that the good functioning of democracy requires pre-political resources; but these are cultural attitudes or mentalities present in civil society, hence in its “lifestyles” that cannot be expected to count as the normative foundations of a constitutional state. In other words, options and motivations also of religious origin and adequate moral styles are indispensable for democratic life, but the “unifying bond” (generating a shared ethos) should not be searched for before or outside the political-constitutional process itself. The Liberal State – insists Habermas – can and must be founded in a self-referential manner exclusively on democratically produced and managed juridical procedures. In this concept of democracy, the autonomy of the constitutional principles and criteria becomes acceptable to all citizens, whatever their faith may be, through exercising rationality. In this perspective Christianity simply belongs to the genealogy of secular or lay reason. According to the philosopher from Frankfurt, religions can fully and rightfully participate in the democratic process on three conditions: renouncing the monopoly of truth, accepting the authority of science and the public primacy of lay/secular law. Only at these conditions do religions find space within democratic societies that are also post-secular.
We must acknowledge the distance separating the lay philosopher from the militant Catholic Böckenförde who states with extreme clarity: “the idea that democracy (characteristic of a constitutional state) is the only form of governing, or at least the only legitimate one, is an ideological postulate – nothing more. Human rights can be acknowledged and implemented under various political conditions, not only democratic ones. Democracy does not oppose human rights, but is not the condition for their possibility and reality. Democracy is not at all universal, as human rights wish to be. But it depends on its possibilities on certain historical, social-cultural and mindset premises without which it cannot exist. A theological position created in such precarious foundations – continues Böckenförde – destroys itself”.
The böckenfördian idea of a link between religion, constitution and democratic public sphere remains distant from the one assumed by Habermas even when Habermas speaks of the “cognitive premises for the public use of reason by religious and lay citizens”. According to the philosopher from Frankfurt in fact, the valid principle remains that “the democratic process cannot draw legitimising strength from morals preordained to law without destroying the performative sense of a community’s democratic self-determination”. In other words, each claim to value, every moral requirement, and every religious persuasion acquires legitimacy only if and when it is included in the juridical system the democratic community provides itself with.
Concurrences
This said, if one analyses more closely recent work by these two authors, one observes – albeit based of different agendas – significant concurrences. And so Habermas writes that the liberal state cannot discourage believers and religious communities from expressing themselves also politically, “because he does not know whether otherwise secular society would be depriving itself of important resources for the foundations of its meaning”. This is not a concession to be belittled in a “procedularist” concept of democracy. This does not mean questioning the separation between religious persuasions and political procedures, but rather in allowing believers – says Habermas – to express themselves “as such also politically”, to politically “translate” their beliefs. Simultaneously however the philosopher presents believing citizens with significant requests: to be open to the contents of truths in other religions, to acknowledge the autonomy and self-sufficiency of secular knowledge and the monopoly of scientific experts within the framework of their fields of expertise and not last, the primacy of secular reason in the political arena.
Habermas’ reasoning is not (like Böckenförde’s) based on the persuasion that religions are the keepers of the ethos necessary for maintaining liberal values, but simply the persuasion that secular and religious people must learn in a reciprocal and equal manner from each other. In particular the “potential of truth” that the secular person must be ready to acknowledge in religious traditions consists in the fact that they “provide the conscience with what is lacking. They keep alive sensitivity for experiencing human failure”.
In reality, in the philosopher from Frankfurt’s considerations the lack of concrete practical references prevents one verifying the real consistency or importance of what he says. He restricts himself to suggesting self reflection and reciprocal learning processes between believers and secular people that are plausible within intellectual sectors (like a seminar), but insufficient in the daily dealings of public opinions and social players addressing strategically political deliberations. If one thinks of the current situation in Italy, the invitation to “reciprocal learning between secular people and believers” sounds to say the least naive. The legal-diplomatic compromise, the result of an understanding between secular people and Catholics, is not even a surrogate of the reciprocal effort to understand the reasons of the parties involved.
Böckenförde has repeated and developed some of the aforementioned reasons in an essay dated 2006 (“The secularised State, its justifications and problems in the 21st century”.) The interesting aspect in this essay lies in a number of passages that discourage any attempt to refer to his thesis when recommending that the State should promote religion as a factor involving the integration of values. Reasoning moves along the lines of two theses: the irreversible secularisation of the liberal state, the irreplaceable guarantor of freedom, and the always open issue of the creation of a social bond capable of ethos. The starting point is a dual acceptation of the States neutrality as far as religions are concerned: the first is a synonym of indifference, of distancing if not of hostility regards to religion; the second is open, broad, extensive neutrality, also inclusive in the sense of understanding the dimension of the public expression of religion. After this premise the classical question reappears: “Where does the liberal and secular state of today draw the resources and how does it maintain that pre-juridical communality and the fundamental ethos indispensable for prosperous coexistence in a liberal order?” The problem of social and cultural cohesion today acquires even more urgent characteristics when referring to Islamic migration in Europe and in Germany.
Who guarantees the cultural basis (originally religious) on which the State itself relies and without which it is fragmented, emptied and loses its power of cohesion? That basis cannot be guaranteed by religion alone or by its promotion by the State. In fact “the secularised State cannot guarantee with the means available to it, the persistence and vitality of religion, nor can it declare religion the binding foundation of collective life. The religious freedom maintained by the state only guarantees the possibility of religion and the existence of religion, not its vitality”.
A fundamental aporia
No text like this one by Böckenförde reveals the basic aporia of his reasoning, which even involves religion itself. In fact he postulates religion as the creative element of ethos, but simultaneously admits that it is incapable of guaranteeing its own vitality. This really is a dilemma.
In truth, a little later the author provides the key to a solution following an orthodox liberal direction. The solution in fact consists in the “loyal compliance of existing laws with the immunity of ideas”. In a liberal order therefore, ideas (religious ones) are/must remain within a free-trade area. This simply means reasserting the centrality of the concept of freedom, which the author rediscovers in the very heart of the Catholic doctrine (thanks to the Second Vatican Council) that sees in freedom the characteristics of the human being as such, even before those of the believer. In this way the model of the secularised liberal State in the end seems mote efficient than expected considering the initial premises.
Hence for example the secular State is capable of addressing the difficult issue concerning religious symbols in public areas. On this subject we observe that Böckenförde expresses a significant clarification regards to concern expressed by the then Cardinal Ratzinger in an exchange of letters with the author, who in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” had disagreed with a generalised prohibition of the Islamic veil. Ratzinger on the contrary disputed that in a State, albeit ideologically neutral, symbols should all be considered equal and therefore did not exclude any forms of discrimination for the safeguarding of its identity. “A State cannot totally remove itself from its roots and elevate itself to a pure rational State so to speak, which deprived of its own culture and without its own profile treats equally all traditions relevant for ethos and for law, and equally classify all public manifestations of religions”. That is what Ratzinger wrote.
Böckenförde answered this concern clearly stating that “religious freedom cannot be distributed in different ways and must include also that of freedom for religious symbols of other faiths. This openness must naturally also include the dominant culture without having to recant its particularity. There are good examples of how these two needs are compatible”. “The quintessence of this debate – he continues – I believe consists in the fact that on one hand religious freedom as a human right is not and cannot be contained by any cultural reservation, on the other hand as far as religious freedom and the equal rights of all religions are concerned, there cannot be any demand to level them off according to any kinds of culture and forms of lifestyles religiously determined as being part of the ordre public. In this perspective, those belonging to other religions (mainly minority religions) live in a diaspora. For life in a diaspora, Islam and the Jewish religion explicitly state that the laws and the customs of the country should be respected”.
This quote contains an interesting passage for later development of the Böckenfördian reasoning. In fact, the concept involving reservations, or Vorbehalt, is positively translated into the secularised state’s duty to respect the “inner reservations” of immigrants also regards to the state itself on condition that they guarantee “loyalty to the Law”. The secularised State therefore cannot demand of immigrants an intimate adhesion to the historical cultural values it originates from, but must make do with demanding of them loyalty to the laws.
Let us quickly draw our conclusions. If we apply this coherent concept of the secular State, regardless of the specificity of immigrated religions and consider this the general concept of a liberal state, does this not perhaps relativize the Böckenfördian emphasis on the need for shared premises of values (also religious) for society’s good functioning? Stating that “in place of general declarations it is loyalty to the law that becomes the basis for coexistence” does Böckenförde not move closer to Habermas’ idea (proceduralist) of democracy?
Böckenförde, Ratzinger, Habermas
It is no coincidence that the names Böckenförde, Ratzinger, and Habermas appear here. The three authors use reciprocal references, but – in addition to this – with their thoughts they circumscribe a theoretical area of rare quality in the Western scenario (to avoid addressing the discouraging Italian quarrels). Perhaps it is also a small revenge for the contemporary German school of thought. Among the authors mentioned, Habermas is the one most attentive to convergences/divergences. It is no coincidence that his famous (and often misunderstood) conversation in 2004 with the then Cardinal Ratzinger, the philosopher from Frankfurt started his speech critically referring to the Böckenfördian Diktum. But the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith did not react.
In fact, the entire conversation between the two famous guests of the Catholic Academy in Munich, beyond their reciprocal deference and the shared conviction of a necessary complementarity between Wissen und Glauben, did not mark any real steps forward in their reciprocal knowledge of each other. The reason for this misunderstanding is a serious one and lies in the impermeability of their respective theoretical constructions. Ratzinger in particular. The Catholic world did instead give a great deal of publicity to Habermas’ thesis on the legitimacy of believers’ access to the “public arena”, ignoring the demanding conditions the philosopher himself outlined for this access.
Habermas instead remained silent, even after Pope Ratzinger’s important lesson at Regensburg that (leaving aside the unfortunate quote perceived as anti-Islamic) expounded again with rigid firmness his theses on the relationship between reason and faith. In this context a decisive subject was his representation of the historical-theological theme concerning the Hellenization of Christianity (a subject that – incidentally – found both Catholic and secular Italian culture totally unprepared). In short, Benedict XVI reasserted that the synthesis between faith and reason, reasserted that the synthesis between faith and reason, defined by the “Hellenised” ancient and traditional Christian tradition, is the only one still defensible today. And therefore presents and rejects in the form of “de-Hellenization of Christianity” all modern and contemporary attempts to overcome that synthesis. This includes forms of scientific rationality that they today expunge from their horizon the faith and the ethos promoted by it.
Habermas reacted to these theses rather late but firmly last February with an article in the “Neue Zuercher Zeitung”. In a paper against the “defeatism of reason” (which certainly found consensus among believers) and in favour of the complementarity between reason and faith (in which faith is presented as the genealogy of secular reason), the philosopher distances himself from Ratzinger’s thesis. The Pontiff – says – “provided the old debate on Hellenization and de-Hellenization of Christianity an unexpected slant in the sense of a critique of modernity. With this it also provided a negative answer to questions asking whether Christian theology should bear in mind the challenges of modern, post-metaphysical reason”.
This is not the place for refocusing on the historical-philosophical-theological debate on the “Hellenization of Christianity”. Let us simply acknowledge Habermas’ disappointment that the complementarity between faith and reason and hence the “reasonableness” of faith, as understood by Ratzinger, are not moving in the direction he expected at that famous meeting in Munich. Catholics who continue to indicate Habermas as the ideal secular interlocutor should take note of this.
Gian Enrico Rusconi is professor of Political Science at the University of Turin, editor of “La Stampa” and collaborator of the magazine “Il Mulino”. His research spans from the historical-political analysis of ethical-political themes. Amongst his most recent books: Come se Dio non ci fosse (As if God did not exist) (Einaudi 2000), Germania Italia Europa. Dallo Stato di potenza alla «potenza civile» (Germany Italy Europe. From the power State to “civil power”) (Einaudi 2003), L’azzardo del 1915 (The 1915 Gamble) (Il Mulino 2005), Non abusare di Dio (Do not take advantage of God) (Rizzoli, 2007).
This article was published in Reset, Number 101.
Translation by Francesca Simmons